Ultrasonic Simulation of Interlaminar Damages in Rotorcraft Composite Components: Approach and Parametric Analysis

Motivation of this work is reliable and efficient detection of damage in rotorcraft composite components for structural health monitoring. Ultrasonic testing (UT) is often applied to detect interlaminar damage onset and growth in composites. Thus, the main focus is on efficient simulation of UT damage detection and evaluation of its sensitivity for representative rotorcraft composite designs. Full 3D modeling approach to correlate damage and sensor output was demonstrated. A wide range of sensor configurations and computational parameters was considered via systematic parametric studies. A statistical variant of the approach that takes into account inevitable randomness of detection and quantifies expected confidence was demonstrated. Generated results can be used for sensor array optimization and confidence estimation